The Smoky Corridor

22

After the bell finally rang, Zack headed into the hall.

Mr. Willoughby was waiting for him right outside the door.

“Hello, Zachary! I hate to trouble you, but might I have a moment of your time?”

Of course nobody else saw or heard the dead chauffeur. They didn’t have Zack’s “special abilities.”

“Do you have math next?” asked Malik, who had come out of homeroom right behind Zack.

“Yeah.”

“Me too!”

“Cool.” Zack was still staring straight ahead—at the ghost of Mr. Willoughby, decked out in his chauffeur uniform and driver’s cap, standing in the hallway while kids changing classes swarmed all around him. One walked straight through him and started brushing at his face like he’d just walked through a sticky spiderweb.

“Um, I need to get something out of my locker,” Zack said to Malik.

“Better hurry. They only give us five minutes between classes. And it takes three minutes and twenty-six seconds to make it to Mrs. Alessio’s classroom.”

“Yeah. Thanks. See you there.”

Zack head-gestured to let Mr. Willoughby know which way to walk.

“Ah! A walk and talk, eh? Splendid idea, Zachary.”

Zack tucked his chin down into his neck so he could talk sideways without anybody noticing.

“What happened?”

“To me? Ah, yes. It seems I died. Heart attack, I believe. I’m a bit fuzzy about the particulars. One minute I’m enjoying my microwaved dinner, and the next I’m chatting with these wise beings in white robes. Anyway, as penance for my worldly misdeeds, the judges have suggested that I perform a stint of ‘community service’ and kindly offered me the opportunity to become your guardian ghost.”

Zack knit his eyebrows. The less he said in this extremely weird conversation with someone nobody else could see, the better.

“Ah,” said Mr. Willoughby, who had apparently learned how to read minds or facial expressions since he’d passed away, “an excellent question. I’m told the position is somewhat new here at this school. And why do you need a guardian? Well, as you might’ve heard from Davy Wilcox—who, by the way, put in a very kind word for me upstairs—a voodoo zombie has recently awoken in his nearby hidey-hole. I know this because, well, mine was the first corpse he feasted upon when waking.”

Zack urped. Almost tossed his cookies.

“Sorry,” said Mr. Willoughby.

“I’m okay.”

“Me too! Fortunately, being dead has one benefit: I didn’t feel a thing while the beast ripped me apart and gobbled down my brain.”

This time when he urped, Zack had to put his hand over his mouth.

“Again, my apologies,” said Mr. Willoughby. “Where was I?”

“The zombie was eating your brain?”

“Ah, yes! As my spirit lingered near my corpse, I heard the zombie’s master, a fiendish ghost of the worst order, state that he would soon be scouring this school for one very special child. Someone newly arrived. Fresh blood, he called it.”

Zack stopped walking. “This is my first year at this school,” he said. “I’m fresh blood. Do you think the zombie’s master meant me?”

“I most certainly do. Oh, by the way—not a word of this to your parents. I’m told it’s for their own protection.”

“But …”

“Fear not, Zachary. You will not need your parents. You have me!”

Yeah, Zack wanted to say, that’s the scariest part of the whole deal.

But he didn’t say it.

Mr. Willoughby had just died.

He didn’t want to make the poor guy feel even worse.